Dungeons of Dredmor

Dungeons of Dredmor, DoD, is a roguelike game made by Gaslamp Games that was released in July 2011. DoD is a very traditional roguelike, it uses turn-based gameplay set on a tiled map that is randomly generated. DoD is written as a spoof of roguelike and traditional fantasies, be prepared for dwarf jokes. I highly recommend DoD to fans of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, or Nethack. The game offers players that are new to roguelikes several less punishing settings, such as disabling permadeath, while giving veterans of the genre a challenge on the hardest settings. There are several aspects of DoD that make it stand out from the other roguelikes that I've played. These aspects include customizable player classes, a crafting system, a fair level of comedy, and a modding community.

Math, Numbers,and Infinity

I love numbers and math, a lot of people don't and they should be warned that this post is almost exclusively about math.

I've been taking a Game theory course online through Cousera and it has been very interesting. Game theory is not actually about making board games or video games, it is a discipline that models strategic interactions of almost any kind. I'm not done with this course yet and don't want to start making posts about it until I have a better understanding of the subject. However the course has reminded me of a lot of the classes I took in college and a couple of the most interesting theories that I found there.

Alas Poor Tamawold.

My plan for this post was to introduce and present another of my D&D characters back stories, however when I opened Tamawold Stormchild's back story this morning I found that it was missing. The file was in it's place but when I opened the file up over two thirds of the story had vanished. It must have fallen through the cracks during a hard drive crash I had a few years ago. I had a moment of silence for Tamawold.

Tamawold was my favorite character to date. As far as stats go he was a shifter warden from 4.0 (which I have mixed emotions about) based mostly on Con and Str, but he was much more than that. Tamawold was my first attempt at a very serious character and my best attempt at creating a fully fleshed out personality. I try to build character personalities out of a kerrnel of emotion and set of values that I can strongly empathize with or at least understand strongly. Dalin from my previous post was based on a very simple set of ideas: youth and naivety, "I just want to sing" and the idea of a reluctant adventurer. Tamawold was a heavier character he was a shield barer to the world,  refused to give in to anything and would eventually become a force of nature.

Dalin Arethi

I've been away for too long and I don't have any good excuses other than visiting family around Christmas.

I said I was going to post a small review about Mass Victory, however I don't feel that my memory is actually up to recalling all the pros and cons of that game since it has been months since I actually played it. Instead I'm revisiting one of my older D&D characters and will likely continue to go back and flesh out a few back stories that have been lost or where very short.

     Dalin Arethi is one of my very first D&D characters that I played for any length of time, he was mostly inspired by the poor child in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The setting was home brewed and I had to talk my DM into letting me use the Whaliendo. He ultimately left the party when my college load became heavy enough I had to make the choice between grades and D&D time, which was a very hard decision. Dalin was made with 3.5 rules and was tons of fun to play. The following story is the back story I submitted to my DM, with a few grammar and spelling corrections that I should have made at the time. Dalin did eventually reunite with Hammmy who had managed to become a celestial gerbil and ,after Dalin spent a few feats, became Dalin's familiar.